Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday April 12, 2012 @10:27AM
from the actually-it's-the-illness-that-does dept.

First time accepted submitter dmr001 writes "In its fortnightly Communicable Disease newsletter (PDF), Oregon Public Health officials note increasing cases of pertussis (whooping cough) in infants, with 146 hospitalizations noted in the 2 year period ending March 2011, and at least 4 deaths since 2003. Most cases are attributed to lack of vaccination, with 86% of those due to parents declining the vaccine. 'Most of our cases are occurring in under- or unvaccinated children, so getting these kids vaccinated seems to the most obvious approach to reducing illness. In principle... pertussis could be eradicated; but we have a long way to go.'"

If you get caught abusing your kids or putting them in unsafe or unhealthy conditions, some government worker is going to step in and take corrective action. Is denying vaccinations not a similar situation that warrants a similar response?

Stop coddling the nutters, let them get pissed off, call the country communist and seek refuge from government tyranny in Somalia. It's the only way the problem will correct itself.

Yes, it is smart to get your children vaccinated, however, the government has no right to mandate this. Keep the government out of this process, or they'll start regulating everything. Also remember that you have to *pay* for a vaccine. So this would be the government mandating that you purchase a product from another private seller. Just not a good thing for the government to get involved in. Please don't vote for this.

To be fair, if vaccines caused autism, I would probably opt out of most vaccines, because most kids don't die of whooping cough or scarlet fever, but autism is forever. It might be rational, depending on the prevalence and severity of the disease, to decline a vaccination.

But, vaccines don't cause autism, and we know that absolutely 100% for a fact. We don't even have to do fancy science to prove it (although we have done that fancy science), because we can simply look at autism rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated kids. If there is no correlation between vaccines and autism, then that precludes the possibility of causation; and there is no correlation, therefore there is no causation.

Parents are not give some magic ability to know science, or understand medicine.Mom aren't magic and there gut feelings are wrong more then right. Fortunately on most matters there isn't an immediate effect.

That parents decision is killing children. When it comes to vaccines, I would welcome back the days where all the children got there shots at the school.

The only people I trust less than qualified, vetted, officials is uneducated jackasses pretending to understand the world around them when really they are just ignorant twits. There is a mantra from conservatives "They think they know better than you!". Um, yep. I think the scientists and knowledgeable health professionals "know better" than the backward backwater assholes who raise their children as if it were the year 1512. Obviously that isn't a general rule -- bureaucrats make all sorts of boneheaded decisions -- but I basically reject the notion that only you can know what is best for you in all circumstances. No; no, no, no; often, others know what is best for you, and people should be open to that possibility.

If we lived in a perfect world, then parents would be rational, intelligent, and informed. Yes, we would all "rather" live in that world. But we don't, we live in a world full of hysterical ignoramuses. (Same basic argument against libertarianism.)

Public Health is a funny thing -- individual actions impact the health of our entire society.

The libertarian in me says that you should be able to make health decisions for your own [and kids] body, including unbelievably stupid things like declining vaccines. However, disease is hard to track -- if your action or negligence causes me physical injury, the libertarian philosophy suggests that you pay the bills. It's hard to employ that tactic for communicable disease. If it's very difficult to measure who is giving the disease to whom, how do we apply libertarian philosophy?

I'd remind you that
(a) this is by and large a state issue, not federal. You're blindly attacking the wrong people, and
(b) this is a generally a bureaucratic and technocratic issue, not a political issue. Public health experts recommend policies, not politicians seeking votes, and
(c) most government folks working for government are civil servants, not politicians. They're just interested in doing their job well, earning a fair wage, and leading a comfortable middle class lifestyle, just like nearly all of us. This idea that "they are sick (control freaks)" is really nonsensical and based on absolutely nothing but your bias. Are individuals troublesome in any organization? To be sure. But you're painting with a remarkably broad brush.

From where I sit, failing to vaccinate a child is reckless endangerment, and social services should get involved. It's easy and inexpensive to reduce your kid's chances of dying from whooping cough to almost zero. Vaccinations. In fact, I submit that since every adult was once a kid, we ought to just cover everybody's vaccinations at childhood 100% by medicare. No insurance, no co-pay, no out of pocket, for both poor and middle class and rich Americans. Hell, I'd include non-citizens too, since the public health costs to citizens can be very high whereas prevention is relatively cheap. Since most parents do this anyway, the net cost for individuals is a wash. Yeah, some old folks end up cross-subsidizing young people, but its a relatively small expense for a good and sustainable public policy.

If I'm going to have my kids near your kids, you damned well better have them vaccinated. If you're willing to keep them out of public, vaccinated events and areas (stadia, soccer leagues, public schools, the private school _I_ go to, public parks, my private club, etc.), then have at it.

Just as I don't want you to come into work with the flu, or shake my hand if you've got an open wound on your palm, please don't force your kids to infect the rest of the world with your 19th century diseases.

Did you know that after 50 years, we were almost rid of Polio? The International Rotary Foundation, and now with the help and massive warchest of the Bill Gates Foundation (to the historical combines tune of something like a Billion dollars) is trying to get rid of the last pockets of Polio on this planet. All it takes is one small village, mostly isolated from everyone, to keep this stuff around - destroying lives and families.

Please excuse me if I take this opportunity to say a hearty "FUCK YOU, GET YOUR GOD DAMNED KIDS VACCINATED" and quit perpetuating these diseases. This doesn't come from the government, it's from your next door neighbor, a parent who cares about his kids. Trust me.

Assuming the claims of the Playboy centerfold are true, the death rate from whooping cough is around 0.5% which is much higher then the rate of autism. In other words, even if there was a correlation between vacines and autism, the vacines are still safer.

If the government can violate an unborn child's right to life in the name of personal choice, then why is the government turning around and saying that you have no personal choice in whether or not your child is vaccinated with questionable substances?

Why doesn't the gov have the right to mandate it? It's a health issue. They can quarantine you in cases of epidemics. Actually, since unvaccinated people are effectively an epidemic waiting to happen, perhaps we should just quarantine them. I understand we have a lovely mostly vacant seaside facility available with a nice tropical climate.

The problem with this argument is that your unvaccinated (due to your choice) kid can kill my unvaccinated (not due to my choice) kid, when otherwise my kid would live a normal life.

Kids under six months of age can't be vaccinated against pertussis, so those who opt out after that age increase the risk of death for kids younger than this. Some people have allergies that prevent vaccination.

So, this isn't a choice that parents make that subject only their own children to risk, but it affects everybody. That makes it everybody's business, and hence in the realm of government regulation.

And yes, I often lean libertarian, but a completely legitimate function of government is to protect individuals from bad choices that other people make.

I hope you're for being thrown out of hospitals with sick your child(ren) too.

Because that's starting to happen when they show up with their unvaccinated little plaguebearer that sends everyone immunocompromised(which are quite a lot, including pretty much everyone elderly) scrambing for the emergncy exits.

1. This IS a matter of public safety. Your choice to not vaccinate your kids can potentially increase my own risk of getting some disease. I might not be vaccinated against something due to an allergy, or other contraindication. Or, maybe I was vaccinated but I was one of those rare people that did not receive immunity from the vaccine. With vaccination there is safety in numbers, so these small corner cases don't have much impact as long as everybody else gets vaccinated.

2. I don't see the point in letting parents make a choice without punishing them, but then punishing them if that choice results in a bad outcome. If the risks that choice brings are unacceptable, then outlaw the choice, not the consequences. This is like telling people that they can drive drunk as long as nobody gets killed, or letting somebody off the hook for a botched assassination attempt because they missed their target.

Yeah. Andrew Wakefield. He might currently be the world's most discredited scientist. For profit motive, he has made children sick and die -- hundreds, maybe thousands of them. In fact, for sickness, certainly thousands, maybe tens or hundreds of thousands.

It's a sliding scale, but I agree, in my opinion failure to vaccinate is criminal-level negligence. The legal question is, can a reasonable person decide not to vaccinate, and in my opinion the answer is no; only unreasonable people can do that.

Also-- and this can't be stressed enough-- autism is not contagious. If vaccines did cause autism (which they do not), getting a vaccine would only put your child at risk. Not getting vaccines puts other people's children at risk too. Your kid might not die from whooping cough, but the fact that your kid gets sick means that he's exposing other children to the disease, and they might die.

Very well, since lack of vaccination in a person is a public health issue due to weakening herd immunity, you get the choice between being vaccinated or preventively quarantined until you get vaccinated. Your individual freedom pretty much ends when it endangers the health of others.

My wife loves me, and we've talked about having kids a fair bit. At first we were discussing things and then I started hearing her opinions on modern medicine etc.

All I had to do was explain to her, with the scientific evidence included, why she was wrong, and then, since as any man knows that isn't going to actually work, flat out make her choose between her backwards ideals and me. I wasn't an asshole about it, but I calmly explained that I wanted children, and if we weren't going to do what is best for their happiness and survival then the relationship was going to end at some point in the future unless she changed her mind.

She picked me. If she hadn't, I've have been sad for awhile, but knowing that I wouldn't have to lose a child to Hepatitis or something years from now would have more than made up for it.

More men need to start standing their ground on this stuff. A lot of men back down for fear of losing their loved one or

This is the age of science, and men tend to think more with their heads and less with their hearts. Now is the time where "Mom knows best" isn't always the best option.

When it comes to apple pies, talking the kid through their first relationship issues, things like that, Mom definitely still knows best. For most everyday things, Mom is the answer. Most of our lives revolve around social interaction of one type or another, which women, on average, excel at in comparison to men.

However in the age of our advanced state of medical knowledge, and informed, rational decision is what is needed. If Mom is going to do that, then you're in the clear. If Mom is not going to do that, then its time to grow a pair of balls and step in.

Now, before anyone screams, yes there are a lot of generalizations in there. These are true, on the AVERAGE. If you're a woman in one of those relatively-speaking "rare" situations where the shoe is on the other foot, then you need to do the same thing.

Your comment spawned an idea for me. I wouldn't have a problem with people not getting vaccinated if they could be held liable for the results of their negligence. So if someone decides that their child won't get vaccinated and my child can't (for age or medical reason) but then contracts some horrible disease from the child who's parent decided not to have them vaccinated then the parent who chose to not have their child vaccinated would have to pay the bills. If my child dies then charge the parent who decided to not have the child vaccinated with negligent homicide. This would allow anyone to be a stupid as they want (we don't have many laws against people doing stupid things but that is increasing) but as soon as it affects someone else then there is recourse. Given that one can sue anyone for anything (whether it holds up in court is different) I am surprised someone hasn't tried this already to test the legal waters.

I personally think control and blame are two of the major unspoken reasons that the vaccine explanation was more readily accepted by parents. If the cause was genetics, that would be outside of their ability to control. Withholding vaccines are within their control. If vaccines were the culprit then parents could blame doctors, the medical establishment, and vaccine companies instead of blaming themselves (If the problem was hereditary, parents shouldn't blame themselves but most will feel guilt anyways.). The current speculation is de novo genetic mutations (mutations near or soon after conception) is the mechanism for autism and hopefully will give parents some relief that it wasn't their fault.

If you live in the US, or a good number of other 1st world countries (Canada, Australia come to mind) - men have say in things to do with home and children only as far as a woman permits it. If she decides she's tired of you, divorce and family court will make sure you are never permitted to invade her prerogative again. All while funding her new single lifestyle with your former home and half your income. And be thankful if she doesn't decide you were "abusive" and have a restraining order sworn out against you so you can't get near your kids anymore. It happens a lot more often than you'd think, to men who did nothing but try to be loving, supporting husbands and fathers.

Of course it will never be 100%. NOTHING is ever 100%, medically or otherwise, short of math (and even then..)

By your argument, nobody should wear seatbelts and helmets because they dont stop all deaths and injuries. Thats absurd and misleading.

If these idiots had gotten their children vaccinated when eligable, the people who dont have a choice on not getting vaccinated have a GREATLY INCREAED CHANCE OF NOT GETTING SICK if everyone else does what they're supposed to. Sorry, this isn't Disneyland, people get sick sometimes no matter what you do. Doesn't mean we should all roll around in the mud and jab one another with dirty needles either.

Also all the other potentially fatal diseases that almost no one gets anymore because of vaccines. It's not really an exaggeration to say that in the days before vaccines, nearly everyone got at least one potentially fatal disease in childhood. Only a small fraction of those actually were fatal of course, but nearly everyone got something that could kill them at some point in early childhood. Of those that weren't killed, maiming was far more common than it is now. Autism may be forever, but so is hearing/sight loss from extreme fevers (surely everyone remembers Helen Keller) or partial/total leg paralysis from Polio. Ever read about someone being "pock-marked" in historical fiction or fantasy? It refers to the horrifying scarring that accompanies the survival of small pox. Makes the worst acne scars you've ever seen seem like some unpleasant bumps.

Even if every single case of autism on record could be directly attributed to vaccine side effects, it would still make sense to continue most of our current vaccination schedule. You could maybe drop a few of the more "optional" ones like chicken pox if that were the case (and it's not). Between diseases based fatalities, and the crippling effects even on some survivors of these diseases it makes zero sense to stop doing them.

If not vaccinating meant that only your kids had the risk of contracting the disease, I'd agree with you. As a parent, you would bear the responsibility for weighing your options and choosing whether or not to vaccinate. It would still be a very good idea, just not a government mandated good idea.

However, when a parent decides not to vaccinate, they put others at risk: The elderly (too old to have gotten the vaccine), the very young (too young to get the vaccine yet), and those with medical reasons for not vaccinating (allergies, immune system disorders, etc). When an action you take could result in the injuring or death of other people, I think it's a perfect time for government to act.

McCarthy has blood on her hands. She used her celebrity status to influence a generation of easily-swayed women to put their babies at risk. The madness would have gone nowhere without her help because the vapid 20-somethings never would have known about that "study" without the hype created by McCarthy. She became the mouthpiece of madness.

No vaccine is 100% effective. Let's pretend that the vaccine in question has a 1% 'failure rate' (it doesn't result in a sufficiently strong immune response to render the treated individual immune to that 'bug'). If you vaccinate 100% of the population, then only a small fraction (1%) can actually catch the 'bug'. The fact that the other 99% of the population is immune greatly reduces the odds of that 'bug' being caught by *anyone*, much less a significant portion of that 1%.

Now, let's pretend the same vaccine is only administered to 75% of the population. Now, instead of having 1% who aren't immune, you've got (roughly) 26% who aren't immune. Suddenly, an outbreak is possible (even likely) because so many more people can catch and transmit the 'bug'. Worse, you've got a segment of the remaining 74% who would *normally* be protected from the virus by the immunization, but whose immune system isn't strong enough to fend off a sustained 'attack'. Now they're vulnerable, too.

People do benefit from it. Ex-Playboy models can sell books and go around talk shows. Discredited doctors can get grants from people desperate to find an autism cure. Alternative Medicine companies can sell sugar pills... I mean, Homeopathic remedies for diseases. There is money to be made here. Probably a lot more than to be made by selling vaccines.

Even more unfortunately is it's not just the children of these retards that suffer. Immunizations aren't perfect, and there is a group of people for which it doesn't take. There is another group of people who can't get vaccinated due to weakened immune systems. These groups are highly at risk due to the actions of the retards, as well.

What makes you evil? Predicating your cost-benefit analysis on pertussis statistics that assume that everyone else is vaccinated.

Incidentally, if you're in the US and have health insurance, the cost of vaccines for children should be zero and the time should be about two minutes tacked on to a pediatrician visit you're already making.

Parent, married. Fucking grow a pair. Have a conversation with your wife, like an adult. Employ rationality and logic, like any geek should. You eschew logic, and you're overly caught up by what is almost statistically guaranteed to be a very average piece of ass. What ae you even doing reading slashdot?

So again, I ask, what in all these odds and risks and everything, makes me evil for not vaccinating my child?

Yes.

Why? Because you only count the odds and risks for YOUR kid. You don't factor the global benefit of eradicating infectious deceases. Also, some people can't get the vaccine (because of allergies or whatever). And these people need the rest of us to be vaccinated.

1) No one is more familiar and in a better position to understand a child than their parents. Parents spend huge amounts of time dealing with their child and learning their quirks, emotions, and knowing their history.

2) Parents expend vast, enormous amounts of resources raising their children, and are directly and massively affected by the decisions that affect their children.

3) Without a doubt and by orders of magnitude, parents are most invested and concerned about their children's well being. There is simply no comparison to the love and care a parent feels towards their children. If there are people who can be trusted to do their best for a child, it's their parents.

4) Parents are legally obligated to provide the resources necessary for a child until they are 18, and to deal with the results of that child.

5) Parents MAY not always be the most rational decision makers concerning their children, and MAY not be the most expert on the decision at hand.

The obvious conclusion from this information is that PARENTS, by large orders of magnitude, are the ones who should be making decisions for their children. They are the defacto most trusted, invested, and authoritative people capable of making the decisions. In my opinion, the government should only step in when it is clear that the parents are giving worse general and long term care than the alternative (IE foster homes, etc.). That line is very, very low.

Doctors are not always 100% correct. They are human, and invariably humans all make mistakes.

Besides which, however much a lot of RN's like to claim they know a lot about medicine, the reality is that they generally don't. I know a fair number of nurses, and it sometimes scares me some of the things that I consider to be relatively common knowledge(probably because I do a lot of reading), or at least definitely should be common knowledge in the medical profession, that they don't know.

That said, doctors are right 95% of the time. Thus you should probably follow their advice 95% of the time. When its really important, like a vaccine that could potentially have side effects on your kid, when there are alternate vaccines or something available, you should research the issue, and inform yourself, and then make an informed decision.

Despite what some people think, learning a lot about one particular issue isn't very daunting. It would only take a few evenings of diligent research to find out about a lot of the vaccines they want to give your child, and if there are alternatives.

If you can't manage to spend a few evenings doing that, then you shouldn't have kids(IMHO)